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Christie’s evening sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Rockefeller Center in New York totaled $133,707,200 tonight, a record for any sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art worldwide. Sixteen new world auction records were set. The top lot of the evening was Edward Hopper’s Chair Car, sold for $14,016,000 that set a new world auction record for the artist. Thirty-five works sold for over $1 million, and 96% of the lots fetched prices within or above pre-sale estimates.

The top lot of the sale was Chair Car, 1965, a quintessential Hopper painting and one of the last works by the artist in private hands. The previous auction record for Hopper was $2.5 million. Chair Car depicts a simple yet forceful composition of four solitary figures, three women and one man, seated far apart from one another and who are seemingly engrossed in thought. The painting came from the collection of David and Helen Pall.

A fabulous highlight of the collection of 13 masterworks of abstract expressionist art presented on auction was Willem de Kooning’s Sail Cloth, painted in 1949. Against a pre-sale estimate of $8-12 million, the painting achieved $13,120,000. Mark Rothko’s Untitled, 1964, was sold for $10,096,000. The total result for the collection, which included works by Rauschenberg, Cornell, Newman, Franz Kline and Smith, was $44,268,800.